Portrait of Mary Sidney Herbert - The Phoebus Foundation

With Koen Fillet and Leen Kelchtermans, Head of Research and Publications at The Phoebus Foundation.

Flowers may wither and ships may sink, but Mary Herbert’s youthful radiance will last forever. Beneath the pearls and silk you meet a woman ahead of her time – a countess, a writer and a patron who knew exactly what she was doing.


Portrait of Mary Sidney Herbert, Dowager Countess of Pembroke, c. 1614–1616. Formal court portrait of a noblewoman wearing richly decorated, pearl-adorned court dress with a lace ruff, set within an interior opening onto a landscape, characteristic of early seventeenth-century English court portraiture.
Unknown Master, Portrait of Mary Sidney Herbert, Dowager Countess of Pembroke, c.1614-1616

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